HTPCs

I want to ask you guys a few questions about HTPCs. I took a Gateway desktop that is a few years old that has an Intel i3 with 6gb of memory and connected it to my HDTV. My goal is to load family pics, home movies, decrypted movies, and internet surf. I want to access this stuff remotely on phones and tablets. Maybe also replace the 5 set top boxes and dvr I have with a six tv capable tv tuner and one cable card. Do you think this is too much for this pc? Plans are to buy a 64 Gb SSD for Windows 7 only to improve boot up time, and buy a 6 TV capable tuner card. I will also buy a 2 Tb WD AV-GP HDD to go along with the 1Tb WD performance drive. I am currently spending about $50+ per month on set top boxes and whole-house DVR, so if I can put this together I will save money in the long run. Please let me know your thoughts on this plan. Thanks!

I don't know who your provider is, but if it's a digital signal you'll need their box for each TV, right? Otherwise the TV's with no boxes will be play back only since they can't receive on their own.

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Originally Posted by sammm

I don't know who your provider is, but if it's a digital signal you'll need their box for each TV, right? Otherwise the TV's with no boxes will be play back only since they can't receive on their own.

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You are correct. Any feed out would just be one signal to all feeds. Unless you set up each TV as a seperate monitor which would require a substancial set of video cards.
As for home movies, dvds, and music same thing.

I would just set up the PC as a sharecenter, provided you have a smart TV or media streaming boxes tied to them such as Roku or Western Digital. Most newer blueray players can stream via network for movies as well.

Additional notes:

I just bought one of the network ShareCenter / Storage Drives and threw a couple 3TB drives in it and they had a walk through for the FTP server portion of it. I stream to all my TVs/Blueray playes without an issue. Its especially handy when on vacation and need a kid movie quick for my 2 year old.

You need one CableCARD for each channel you want to record at once. I don't know how much a PC like that will handle but for CableCARDs I think it's more hard drive than CPU. Also don't know about what options are available to make it possible to access remotely but for mobile devices you have to have some offline video conversion done and network configured for remote access.

Some open source HTPC software I've been meaning to check out is XBMC. I'd start looking at what that can do and look for alternatives/competitors if it doesn't do what you need.

XBMC is great if you need still need a desktop. Otherwise, you may want to look into OpenELEC, which is a Linux distro with XMBC tightly integrated.

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Originally Posted by GroceryHauler

You need one CableCARD for each channel you want to record at once. I don't know how much a PC like that will handle but for CableCARDs I think it's more hard drive than CPU. Also don't know about what options are available to make it possible to access remotely but for mobile devices you have to have some offline video conversion done and network configured for remote access.

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There are "six tuner" tv tuners that use only one cable card ($6/month). The htpc would replace the dvr. Getting rid of 4 set top boxes and a whole house dvr would save me about $50 per month. The drawback is paying $250 for the tuner, $100 x 5 for Windows Media Center extenders to replace the set top boxes, $100 for the 2 terabyte WD AV-GP harddrive. So $850 total cost and 1.5 years to breakeven.

I have yet to have a positive experience with what you're talking about and I've been doing some flavor of htpc for going on 15 years.

For the wife approval factor, here's what's worked best:
- directv with one dvr that basically the kiddos use for their crap
- a media server (two actually in my case, one running unraid, one running win7)
- u torrent with rss feeds and setup to auto record the shows we watch with regularity (and for movies etc).
- nmt / popcorn hours throughout the house (which is cat5 wired btw) for playing the media off the server(s). A boxxee box, raspberry pi with xbmc or anything that can read from plex works well.
- harmony remotes

Things that I've tried that sucked my soul:
- Windows media center (proprietary format hell)
- myth TV (worked really well until he became the standard and we wanted more than ota)
- hd home runs (work until they dont)
- cable card (you will have zero luck getting anyone at the cable company that can help you with them... And as of the last time I looked you're stuck with a Windows box which means it will be inherently unstable)
- Windows media server extenders (overpriced, slow, unstable, only able to play msfts formats do no divx or Blu-ray or other common formats)

And more crap that I don't want to bore you with. I've used xbmc since you had to compile your own and put it on the Xbox... It was great then, but now it's legacy of crap code is coming back to haunt it (I worked on its Web front end, and recently built a raspberry pi myth box for my wife's viewing pleasure in the tub)

Thanks goofygrin. You probably saved me a lot of headaches (I knew some of you guys have done this before). I may just skip the tv tuner idea. Too long to breakeven and the wifey doesnt like the idea. I will probably just expand my FIOS DVR with a 2 Tb drive (about $140 for drive, case and cable). My wife fills up my DVR with Hallmark movies and my son records his stuff leaving no room on the 500 Gb DVR for me.:D

Or pony up for a second DVR. It sucks, but the lack of associated headache is worth it IMO. Luckily Directv's DVRs are networked, so a second one plays along well with the primary. TW's and Fios' motorola DVRs are some of the worst on the market though...

Agreed on the FiOS DVR's being terribad. If you're not on the main DVR box, you can't even pause or rewind live TV :(

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Originally Posted by motorollow

There are "six tuner" tv tuners that use only one cable card ($6/month). The htpc would replace the dvr. Getting rid of 4 set top boxes and a whole house dvr would save me about $50 per month. The drawback is paying $250 for the tuner, $100 x 5 for Windows Media Center extenders to replace the set top boxes, $100 for the 2 terabyte WD AV-GP harddrive. So $850 total cost and 1.5 years to breakeven.

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Yeah, my mistake. I remembered later that they have multi-channel CableCARDs. Make sure to get a tuner card that supports a multi-channel one. I didn't know there were 6-channel cards now but knew there were 4-channel ones. I've gone through the same debate myself. I haven't messed with HTPC stuff since the SD days. Another factor is where your get your channel listings. Don't know what's around now but I remember the service I was using way back was either dissolving or going to start charging fees for use.

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Originally Posted by goofygrin

Things that I've tried that sucked my soul:
- cable card (you will have zero luck getting anyone at the cable company that can help you with them... And as of the last time I looked you're stuck with a Windows box which means it will be inherently unstable)

And more crap that I don't want to bore you with. I've used xbmc since you had to compile your own and put it on the Xbox... It was great then, but now it's legacy of crap code is coming back to haunt it (I worked on its Web front end, and recently built a raspberry pi myth box for my wife's viewing pleasure in the tub)

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I was going to mention the possibility of lack of support for such a setup but haven't specifically used a CableCARD. I'm not surprised. Also, I didn't think the Raspberry Pi was powerful enough to run Myth TV... at least partially because it doesn't support the device's hardware video decoder. Are you using it for HD? And if so, what format?

My idea to replace the set top boxes with the multi-tv tuner and extenders is not going to happen. MICROSOFT says you really need a processor and 1Gb RAM for each Windows Media Center extender. This means I would need an Intel i7 and more memory.

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Originally Posted by effse7en

Agreed on the FiOS DVR's being terribad. If you're not on the main DVR box, you can't even pause or rewind live TV :(

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I have 3 DVR (all HD dvr) and can pause/rewind all of them. Which version do you have?

I'm not running myth anymore. I'm using raspberry with xbmc (a special build that uses the gpu). It can do hd but not Blu-ray.

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Originally Posted by mtrx804

I have 3 DVR (all HD dvr) and can pause/rewind all of them. Which version do you have?

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he's saying on the non dvr boxes you can't pause TV (same issue with dtv).

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Originally Posted by motorollow

My idea to replace the set top boxes with the multi-tv tuner and extenders is not going to happen. MICROSOFT says you really need a processor and 1Gb RAM for each Windows Media Center extender. This means I would need an Intel i7 and more memory.

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Try piecing a PC together, newegg has some pretty cheap prices around the holidays. :D

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Originally Posted by mtrx804

I have 3 DVR (all HD dvr) and can pause/rewind all of them. Which version do you have?

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On AT&T Uverse, the box in the living room was the DVR, and all the other ones were just regular receivers, but you could still pause and rewind live tv. On FiOS, you can only do that on the main DVR box. Like hell we are paying that much extra for another DVR box. I didn't even want TV, but my roommate that handles the bills added it in when we moved without asking.